webOS 'most successful smartphone' for O2 Germany

After all the consternation over whether (or at this point, how badly) Verizon and Palm stumbled launching the Palm Pre Plus, we and a few of our readers were reminded that Palm is also trying to launch themselves in Europe. Palm hasn't traditionally been strong in the old countries, so how have they been doing?

A few articles back up a general feeling: pretty good in Germany, pretty poorly in the UK. Heise online (Google Translation) reports that André Krause, CFO for O2 Germany, called the Pre "The most successful smartphone at O2." Credit for O2 Germany's generally good results is their progressive contract (or, actually non-contract) system. We suspect that the fact that O2 Germany's QWERTZ Pre is the only unlocked Pre on the market may also have something to do with it - not to mention a compelling ad campaign.

Things may not be as rosy in the UK. Mike S over at Wirefresh broke down how the UK launch broke down, from the Pre not appearing on O2 UK's homepage early enough, to the well-documented fast that the App Catalog in the UK was (and is) seriously behind its US counterpart, to persistent hardware issues. We might add that the Palm Pre is directly up against the iPhone on O2 in the UK, while in Germany that's not the case